Recent trip to Anilao. Have cut it down from "our" 20min version to 7mins for the web, lol. Feel free to comment and critique.

Love the video.. sometimes felt like the music was a bit uptempo, compared to the nudis and critters that were rather chilled.. :-).

Very nice video, I like the variety of marine life. My wife and I will be there in September. Can't wait !!!

lovely. Enjoyed watching this. Will be there in October...cant wait :-)

Guys I Know Crystal blue is the top to place for black water, but what are the other options ?

Thanks

Diggy

Edited June 4, 2025Jun 4 by scubadiggy

Lovely video!

Edited June 4, 2025Jun 4 by vkalia

Thanks! As to the music I tried the upbeat music with the nudis to "liven" it up and sync with the quicker transitions, lol. We dove with another couple who had been to Anilao many times. They loved another resort that they felt was closer to the dive sites, was more orientated to hard core divers and less expensive. All I remember about it is the resort was all painted yellow, lol. Maybe it was just luck but I liked Solitude Acacia because there were not a bunch of hard core divers and photogs. We had the camera room pretty much to ourselves. The crew would get our cameras to and from the rinse tanks and there was just a more mellow feel. I'm not a lay around the pool guy but there could be more lounge chairs around the pool. Again I estimate the resort was no more than at 60% capacity.

Edited June 4, 2025Jun 4 by aquabluedreams

soooo cool. I shoot stills. Can you share the technique and tools you use to create the video clips? I am interested to explore. Thank you. Salamat!

https://www.instagram.com/mike.lloyd.foto/

Thank you! At best we are very amateur photographers, that especially applies to editing. Apple users editing on an old 24inch iMac running Final Cut Pro X, FCPX, Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop. Cameras are one Sony RX100 IV, with two old S&S strobes, Nauticam housing, CMC1 macro lens. Video mainly from a Cannon HFG50 with +2diopter, Gates housing and two 4k Kraken video lights.

Editing process. (sorry stream of conscious post)

1. Of course we research our destination and have some idea of images we want to capture.

2. We talk to our dive guides on arrival about our hopes, ideas and what could actually be done given we are typically diving with others.

3. While traveling minor deleting of clearly bad images/clips.

4. Get home and download all images to old 6 terabyte hard drive.

5. I set up KEEP FILES/Folders and as I review all the images I move all potential keepers into these folders, don't bother with deleting individual non-keeper images.

6. As I go through images themes start to appear...for us that includes where my wife shot good video of a subject that I may have decent stills of.

7. Once I have the base Keeper images I edit the stills and convert them to jpgs.

8. Once I have all the Keeper images and clips I import into FCPX.

9. In Final Cut Pro I start pulling the best video clips and cutting them down from their original length to 4 - 15 second clips, just the best action.

10. Start pairing video clips with matching still images, typically by subject matter.

11. At this point it is all the "best" clips/images and in the timeline well over an hour of images. In no particular order

12. First I do a long version of the video just for my wife and I. It will be long, often +30mins. This is cut down from the +1hour "raw" version. Like movies, books, etc I go by the High, Low, High format. Big "exciting" start to the video, then into slower more detailed/artsy middle and finish the video with the best, most action filled images/music.

    NOTE: I hate the sound of my own voice so just use text clips for info.

13. Once the draft for us is done I start editing the video clips and just putting the long version into a more polished final cut.

14. For the Youtube page I try to cut down the long version to 7-12mins for public consumption.

FYI we just finished a 18 day, 5000mile roadtrip to Alaska and came home with 12,000images, 1 terabyte of data, lol. I think for these longer journeys I will try going to a Chapters style. Maybe by days, routes or subject matter. For example this Alaska roadtrip could be broken into Bears Eating Salmon, Incredible Glaciers, Wildlife we saw along the way, etc. That way Youtube viewers can just pick the parts they are interested in. Another thing to play with.

Anyone else have input feel free!

Edited September 17, 2025Sep 17 by aquabluedreams